136 Nev., Advance Opinion 5 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEVADA CLARK COUNTY OFFICE OF THE No. 74604 CORONER/MEDICAL EXAMINER, . Appellant, F I L E D vs. LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, eer ae ELIZABETH A. BR Respondent. SDE vEAR TEE = ape CLARK COUNTY OFFICE OF THE 0. 16085 CORONER/MEDICAL EXAMINER, Appellant, vs. LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, Respondent. Appeal from a district court order requiring the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner to disclose unredacted juvenile autopsy reports under the Nevada Public Records Act (Docket No. 74604), and appeal from a post-judgment district court order awarding attorney fees and costs (Docket No. 75095). Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County; James Crockett, Judge. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded (Docket No. 74604); vacated (Docket No. 75095). Steven B. Wolfson, District Attorney, and Laura C. Rehfeldt, Deputy District Attorney, Clark County; Marquis Aurbach Coffing and Micah S. Echols and Jacqueline V. Nichols, Las Vegas, for Appellant. McLetchie Law and Margaret A. McLetchie and Alina M. Shell, Las Vegas, for Respondent. oc oer i 10-0181 06, Be‘Suenene Court Neon O90 McDonald Carano LLP and Kristen T. Gallagher, Las Vegas, for Amici Curiae the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 11 media organizations. BEFORE THE COURT EN BANC. OPINION By the Court, PARRAGUIRRE, J.: These appeals require us to interpret various provisions of the Nevada Public Records Act (NPRA) and other statutory provisions addressing public access to information concerning the deaths of children and juveniles. Specifically, we are asked to review a district court order requiring the Clark County Coroner's Office to produce unredacted juvenile autopsy reports under the NPRA. We are also asked to review the district court’s award of attorney fees and costs to the Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ), which had petitioned the district court to compel production of the autopsy reports after the Coroner’s Office refused. The Coroner’s Office argues that it may refuse to disclose a juvenile autopsy report once it has provided the report to a Child Death Review (CDR) team under NRS 432B.407(6). We disagree. Because NRS 432B.407(6) limits access to public information, particularly information that the Legislature has determined should be generally available to the public, we interpret NRS 432B.407(6)s confidentiality provision narrowly and conclude that it applies strictly to the CDR team as a whole and may not be invoked by individual agencies within a CDR team to limit access to information the agency holds outside of its role on the team.‘Surname Court O90 We agree, however, with the Coroner’s Office's argument that juvenile autopsy reports may include sensitive, private information and that such information may be properly redacted as privileged. In this regard, we conclude that the district court erred when it ordered the production of unredacted juvenile autopsy reports. We therefore remand for the district court to assess whether any such information that may be contained in the requested autopsy reports should be redacted under the test adopted in Clark County School District v. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 134 Nev. 700, 707-08, 429 P.3d 313, 320-21 (2018), and we explain the amount the Coroner’s Office may collect for expending resources to provide any such redaction. In addition, we reject the Coroner’s Office’s argument that NRS 239.012 immunizes a governmental entity from an award of attorney fees when the entity, in response to a records request, withholds public records in good faith. We conclude instead that NRS 239.012’s immunity provision applies explicitly to damages and should be interpreted independently from. NRS 239.011, which entitles a prevailing records requester to recover attorney fees and costs regardless of whether the government entity withholds requested records in good faith. Thus, a governmental entity is not immune from an attorney fees award to which a prevailing records requester is entitled under NRS 239.011. We vacate the district court’s award of attorney fees to LVRJ because it is premature to determine here whether the LVRJ is the prevailing party in the underlying NPRA action. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND In April 2017, the LVRJ submitted to the Coroner’s Office a public records request under the NPRA. LVRJ sought autopsy reports, notes, and other documentation for all autopsies the Coroner’s Office‘Surneve Count © 00 extraordinary use of its personnel.” Id. This court is not at liberty to set aside, disregard, or rewrite the NPRA’s explicit limitations on fees recoverable for a governmental entity’s extraordinary use of personnel. The NPRA does not immunize a public entity from an award of attorney fees The Coroner’s Office argues that it is immune from an award of attorney fees because it withheld the requested autopsy reports in good faith. Specifically, the Coroner’s Office contends that NRS 239.011(2) and NRS 239.012 must be interpreted together, such that NRS 239.012’s immunity from “damages” provision must be read to encompass NRS 239.011’s attorney fees provision. Interpreting NRS 239.011(2)s language as “explicit and plain,” the district court concluded that LVRJ was entitled to attorney fees as a prevailing party in its NPRA action. We review the district court’s conclusions of law de novo. Logan v. Abe, 131 Nev. 260, 264, 350 P.3d 1139, 1141 (2015) (holding when eligibility for a fee award depends on interpretation of a statute or court rule, the district court’s decision is reviewed de novo). We affirm the district court’s order insofar as it correctly interpreted NRS 239.011(2) as entitling a prevailing records requester to attorney fees regardless of whether the governmental entity responds in good faith to a public records request. NRS 239.011(2) provides that in an action to obtain access to public records, “[iJf the requester prevails, the requester is entitled to recover . . . costs and reasonable attorney’s fees in the proceeding from the governmental entity whose officer has custody of the book or record.” (Emphasis added.) NRS 239.012 provides that “[a] public officer or employee who acts in good faith in disclosing or refusing to disclose information and the employer of the public officer or employee are immune from liability for damages, either to the requester or to the person whom 25‘Sumene Count ews On Be the information concerns.” The plain language of both provisions compels reading them independent of one another, such that eligibility for attorney fees does not depend on the good-faith response of the governmental entity, but solely on whether the requester is a prevailing party. As defined by Black’s Law Dictionary, the term “entitle” means “(to grant a legal right to or qualify for,” Entitle, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019), and an “entitlement” is defined as “[aln absolute right to a (usually monetary) benefit . .. granted immediately upon meeting a legal requirement,” Entitlement, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). The statute’s language plainly provides that if LVRJ is the prevailing requester, it has met the sole legal requirement which qualifies it for, or makes it “entitled to,” reasonable attorney fees and costs. See also Las Vegas Metro. Police Dep't v. Blackjack Bonding, Inc., 131 Nev. 80, 82, 343 P.3d 608, 610 (2015) (holding a records requester “was a prevailing party and thus entitled to recover attorney fees and costs pursuant to NRS 239.011”). RS 239.012, on the other hand, by its plain language deals with governmental immunity from civil “damages” for good-faith disclosure of information. We have interpreted “damages” in other governmental immunity statutes to exclude an award of attorney fees. See Las Vegas Metro. Police Dep't. v. Yeghiazarian, 129 Nev. 760, 768-69, 312 P.3d 503, 509 (2013) (allowing recovery of attorney fees in addition to damages subject to NRS 41.035's cap); Arnesano v. State, Dep't of Transp., 113 Nev. 815, 821, 942 P.2d 139, 143 (1997). Because NRS 239.012 relates specifically to governmental immunity, “damages” as used in this provision must be interpreted consistently with our interpretation of “damages” as used in other governmental immunity statutes. See Savage v. Pierson, 123 Nev. 86, 94, 157 P.3d 697, 702 (2007) (“[Wihen the same word is used in different 26‘Suenene Court O90 statutes that are similar in respect to purpose and content, the word will be used in the same sense, unless the statutes’ context indicates otherwise ....”). The Coroner's Office argues that interpreting “damages” independently would yield an absurd result, because other than the attorney fees provided for in NRS 239.011(2), there is no other type of “damages” that could flow from a governmental entity withholding a public record or other information in good faith. In light of the Coroner's Office’s privacy argument, with which we partly agree, it is not difficult to conclude that “damages” as used in NRS 239.012 contemplates civil damages, not attorney fees. As we discussed in Clark County School District v. Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Nevada's common law recognizes the tort of invasion of privacy for unreasonable intrusion upon the seclusion of another. The purpose of the tort is to provide redress for intrusion into a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy ....” 134 Nev. at 708, 429 P.3d at 320 (citations omitted). We decline to speculate as to whether the Legislature conceived of specific privacy-based or other causes of action when enacting NRS 239.012's immunity provision. A prevailing requester’s entitlement to attorney fees and costs does not depend on whether the government withheld the requested records in good faith. Here, however, it is premature to conclude whether LVRJ will ultimately prevail in its NPRA action. The district court must decide the extent to which the juvenile autopsy reports contain private information that the Coroner's Office should redact. We conclude that NRS 239.012, as a matter of law, immunizes a governmental 270M

entity from “damages,” and that the term does not encompass attorney fees and costs.® CONCLUSION ‘We conclude that the Coroner’s Office has not demonstrated that NRS 432B.407(6), or any other authority, authorizes it to withhold juvenile autopsy reports in their entirety in response to a public records request. To the extent that the requested reports may contain private information or confidential medical information, we remand for the district court to evaluate under Cameranesi the scope of information that should be redacted from the reports. While NRS 239.012 does not immunize the Coroner's Office from an award of attorney fees as a matter of law, we nonetheless vacate the district court's award of attorney fees because it cannot yet be determined whether LVRJ is a prevailing party in its underlying NPRA action. In light of the foregoing, we affirm the district court’s conclusion that the Coroner's Office may not rely on NRS 432B.407(6) to withhold juvenile autopsy reports in their entirety in response to a public records request. We further affirm the district court’s conclusion that NRS 239.012 does not immunize a governmental entity from an award of attorney fees to which a prevailing records requester in a public records action is entitled. We reverse the district court’s order requiring production of unredacted juvenile autopsy reports, and we remand for the district court to assess the extent to which the reports may contain private information and medical or In light of our decision to reverse and remand for further proceedings, we leave to the sound discretion of the district court the determination of whether LVR4J is entitled to attorney fees as the prevailing party in this action. 2805 Be other health-related information that should be redacted. Finally, because it is not yet determined what information LVRJ will ultimately obtain as a result of its petition, we cannot yet conclude whether LVRJ is a prevailing party, and we accordingly vacate the district court’s order awarding attorney fees to LVRJ. Parraguirre Hardesty tad 3. Stiglich oo 3 Cadisl 29